The Kodak Empire: Getting ready to have a "Going Out Of Business" sale?

We might as well face it: the Eastman Kodak Company is virtually dead.

For years, it has been laying off tens of thousands of people in the Rochester area alone, having an adverse effect on our local economy. For years, Kodak has been shedding different “unprofitable” divisions of the company to create a “meaner and leaner” organization. Most people warily suggested that Kodak was downsizing enough so that it could be more easily sold off.

For years, its executives have been voting themselves pay raises and constructing their golden parachutes so that they can comfortably and safely bail out when the end comes. Tant pis to Rochester!

Today, the D&C announced that Kodak would be discontinuing production of its desktop inkjet printers. They will continue to make the ink for them, however. Somehow, this will help to save the company, by continuing to make parts for a machine that they will no longer produce! What part of Oz do these people come from?

But then, Kodak’s executives have been making incredibly stupid decisions and mistakes for over a quarter of a century now. It’s a wonder that their shareholders didn’t have them committed to an institution a long time ago!

200 jobs will be cut by this action. This comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Kodak would be cutting 1,000 jobs. Cutting jobs has been a weekly occurrence at Kodak even before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, to reorganize!

A more cynical reply is that Kodak’s executives filed for Chapter 11 to give themselves more time to scarf up as much money as they can before the company goes belly-up.

It’s not sure how the loss of these 200 jobs will affect Rochester, because most of Kodak’s products are manufactured in Communist China.

It has become rather commonplace for fine, patriotic American big businessmen to whine about the evils of Communism and collective bargaining from the labor unions. So they negotiate with Communist regimes and third-world dictatorships to locate their factories in those countries, and export American jobs to them. The workforce in those countries are employed for slave-labor wages, from which these fine, patriotic American big businessmen derive huge profits. It is from these profits that they fund the campaigns of equally fine, patriotic American politicians, who whine about the evils of Communism and collective bargaining from the labor unions! If elected, these fine, patriotic, American politicians seek to get their benefactors tax breaks for creating jobs…in those evil Communist countries and third-world dictatorships!

Unfortunately, none of them choke on the stench of their own hypocrisy.

And, oddly enough, it didn’t save the day for the Eastman Kodak Company! Apparently, they didn’t make selling out American Labor to foreign countries profitable enough to keep the boat afloat.

Furthermore, Kodak’s executives are asking for an additional four months extension to come up with a reorganization plan. They haven’t come up with one in the last eight months, and their creditors are getting itchy.

Failing that, it’s Chapter 7 for the Eastman Kodak Company: total liquidation and taking flight into oblivion. Unfortunately, this appears to be where Kodak is headed.

What will that mean for Rochester?

Well, there are still a few thousand Rochesterians who work for Kodak, so they’ll be out of jobs. They can compete with thousands of other unemployed and underemployed people for minimum wage jobs that the county and Citygov take such “pride” in creating. This will also have a negative impact on our local economy. There will be the majestic Kodak Office Building to look at, as long as it lasts; are there any other local businesses large enough to take it over, or will it go under the wrecking ball in a few years? There are various other, smaller buildings that bear the “Eastman” name; as they are still occupied, there is little fear that they will be bulldozed in the near future. As for the Kodak retirees, who knows what their rights will be after Kodak disappears?

Kodak has been dying for a long time, and it seems that the greatest shock to Rochester will be psychological. Kodak made Rochester the “Imaging Capital of the World,” and Rochester seemed only to exist to cater to Kodak. With Kodak’s demise ( long foreseen and long ignored ), Rochester will need to reinvent itself, if it is up to the task!

The figures came out yesterday: Rochester ranks 7th in the area of child poverty! That’s across the entire nation, NOT just New York State!

The D&C’s political blogger, Joe Spector, brought this point home today! Rochester’s level of child poverty has been a disgrace for years, and it has only gotten worse.

This is NOT a good thing.

Frequently, the county and the city high five each other over the “creation” of thousands of new jobs here. So how can we have such a dismal amount of child poverty?

Well, perhaps its because the county and the city never bother to take into account the thousands of jobs we lose here every year. They never add THAT into their tally. Or the large numbers of underemployed people, because many jobs only offer part-time positions with no benefits whatsoever.

And of the jobs that DO come here, what sort are they? Most are of the minimum wage variety. Even if people worked at those full-time ( with perhaps a few hours of overtime thrown in ), they would never come close to the median wage in Rochester. Many are of the “call center” variety, which have a high turnover rate. One of the possibilities that the Winn Company, the new owners of the Sibley Building, is suggesting is to locate a call center there as well. These are NOT 9 to 5 jobs; the people who work in them are expected to be able to work at shifts that can range anywhere from 24/7/365. This reflects the “needs” of modern society, which expects instant gratification.

It is hard for single parents with children at home to work at them ( though many do ), though paying for child care and health insurance cuts into whatever they earn, and the lack of parental supervision takes its own toll on society. Welfare, as bad as it is, can be seen as an alternative. But then, people on public assistance are seen as lazy or parasites.

Technology HAS changed. The need for large factory complexes is vanishing from our economic infrastructure, although there are plenty of manufacturing jobs by American owned companies still left. They have been shipped abroad, though, where the cost of production is lessened because of cheap foreign labor. These American companies thereby derive huge profits, which they promptly bank offshore ( like Mitt Romney does ) and demand tax breaks from the government!

Locally, COMIDA ( an agency of Monroe County’s government ) offers businesses millions of dollars in tax breaks ( in property tax ) to “expand” their labor force. Once again, this expansion is meant to “create” mostly minimum wage jobs for a pitifully small number of people. Worse, the rest of us have to make up the difference in our property taxes to balance the budget.

And worse still, most of these minimum wage jobs are located outside of the City of Rochester, necessitating either owning a vehicle or the use of wholly inadequate public transportation.

Some people might point out that the minimum wage has increased. That’s true enough. But the cost of living has increased as well, eating up any real gains that might have been made by increasing the minimum wage. This is an example of spiraling inflation, while business owners claim that the increase is making their businesses less profitable, and threaten to movetheir production centers abroad!

On the other hand, why should “better” businesses choose to locate here, anyway? Rochester has one of the worst education systems in New York State, if not the country. Less than half of our students graduate high school, although they certainly know how to use “smart phones” and computers! Most call centers require a high school diploma or a GED for employment; to move up the food chain there ( and make a slightly higher wage ), an Associate’s or a Bachelor’s degree is necessary most of the time.

The City of Rochester: We now rank 7th nationally in the area of child poverty. How soon will it take before we sink to first place?

Of course, absentee parents are at fault. And so are the voters, who continually re-elect an inept and incompetent School Board, which is unwilling or unable to make necessary changes in our school system that would produce more graduates ( and better graduates ) that could be seen as a desirable labor pool for those “better” companies people keep demanding that our elected officials entice into our city.

It’s easier to blame the teachers and the teachers’ union.

As for the children, what are we training them for? We have children giving birth to children that they are unable to support financially or adequately care for. Can we tell them “Stay in school. With the inadequate education we provide, you can get an inadequate, minimum wage job that will keep you and your family in enough poverty so that you can qualify for some kind of public assistance, and your children can follow in your footsteps?”

This is, in effect, what we are telling them. This is what we have settled for.

Add to that the “gang related” violence that the police department reminds us is the cause for most of the murders and the shootings in Rochester, and the “Thug Culture” created around it, and one can see why the “better” companies DON’T come to Rochester…even with huge bribes that throw our economy out of kilter. It’s simply not attractive enough for them to locate here.

Until government addresses the causes of child poverty, and its self-induced hypnosis that by creating inadequate minimum wage jobs, it IS doing that, things will only get worse.

One might remember that the word “job” stands for “Just Over Broke.”

It’s a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

And how soon do you think it will be before we make it to first place?

Contributors

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Rich Gardner has been writing about the history, culture and waterways of Upstate New York for years. His articles have appeared in U.S. and Canadian publications, and one book, Learning to Walk. He is an alumnus of Brighton High School and SUNY Geneseo. He operates Upstate Resume & Writing Service in Brighton and recently moved to Corn Hill, where he is already involved in community projects. "I enjoy the 'Aha!' moments of learning new things, conceptual and literal. City living is a great teacher."

Ken Warner grew up in Brockport and first experienced Rochester as a messenger boy for a law firm in Midtown Tower. He recently moved downtown into a loft on the 13th floor of the Temple Building with a view of the Liberty Poll and works in the Powers Building overlooking Rochester’s four corners as Executive Director for UNICON, an organization devoted to bringing economic development to the community. He hopes to use his Rochester Blog to share his observations from these unique views of downtown.